


Overheated

by glasscamellias



Category: MOTHER: Cognitive Dissonance
Genre: Angst, Body Dysphoria, Fondling, Friends With Benefits, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Non-Consensual Body Modification, chimera Alinivar, midgame spoilers, tentacles but not in the usual sense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-16 08:27:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14807831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glasscamellias/pseuds/glasscamellias
Summary: Alinivar didn’t want the mechanized body he had been forced into, which seemed so heavy and ugly, which his friends shied away from, not knowing how to react.Larice offers a moment of comfort and understanding, which soon becomes physical.





	Overheated

He hadn’t thought it would be this heavy. At the time, he hadn’t thought about anything at all, numb and exhausted, but it was catching up to him now. The inescapable weight of his bottom half, how uncomfortably sharp his vision had become. The way Colonel Saturn edged away (“Different smell,” he squeaked); the way Niiue looked at him, too tired to be that upset about what Alinivar had done to himself. The way Zarbol hadn’t said anything at all. How Elmadan flinched away when they had finally returned to the ship, his own tendrils coiling and squirming.

It was just a mistake. He hadn’t thought the pod was anything more than a revitalizing machine. He had been low on PSI, terrified that he might lose someone else if he didn’t have enough left to heal them, and when the door had locked behind him...

If there was a way to fix him (which seemed less and less possible with each day), there wasn’t enough time, not when Larice needed repairs far more. They had a world to save, and if he could still walk and fight, that was the important thing, right? They had to keep going, no matter the stupid mistakes Alinivar had made.

But would he be like this forever? Was there really anything to be done for a mook with his tentacles cut off, unable to regrow more with so much metal in the way? If he had been an outcast before, then he was as good as socially dead now. How was he supposed to perform another concert like this? How could he show his face to the mooks on Saturn? Or Larice?

Especially Larice.

-

They didn’t exactly have time to catch up, after being thrown into such a frightening version of Earth. Only after defeating the Point of Power (the _final_ one, how had they finished this already? Was this whole quest close to being done?) did they have any time to breathe. With the sun going down, more and more enemies were starting to swarm, and it didn’t seem sane to venture onward.

“Surprised that the windows haven’t been broken out, but that’s an advantage, right? We’ll hear if they break,” Zarbol said, zipping from one to another, surveying the house. There wasn’t much to barricade them with, but Larice pushed furniture in front of the door, and that would have to do.

Somehow, Alinivar felt safe there, in this weird Earth house. Enemies never followed them directly into a Point of Power, and there was something peaceful about it, probably because it was one of the few buildings that was unscathed from whatever calamity had happened in this place. The paint wasn’t even singed, despite all the fire-wielding enemies wandering around outside. He knew they could get some rest there. No one stopped him as he headed back to the second floor.

Directly sleeping in the Point of Power room seemed disrespectful, but there was a second room, pink instead of blue. It was dusty, and humans didn’t use proper hyberpods, but it still seemed like an okay place to sleep. Zarbol and Colonel Saturn might have had enough energy to search the first floor, but he was too worn out to keep going.

Had it only been two days since they had crashed onto a far more normal Earth? And just a few frantic hours since they had gotten Larice back. It was a surprise that they had survived all that, and a miracle that they had reclaimed a Point of Power at the end of it. After all of that, he just wanted a safe, quiet place to collapse.

The carpet should have felt strange and rough against his tentacles, and he wasn’t leaving a faint goopy trail behind him like he should have been. The wrongness of it all was enough to set him off, now that he wasn’t fighting for his life and actually had time to think. His upper eyes began to water, and when his center eye failed to do the same—

“Are you alright?” He yelped, knocking into the desk he had been holding himself up with. He had hoped for a few minutes of solitude at the very least, before anyone had noticed he was gone, but... Of course Larice followed him up here. Out of the three, he was the only one changed from when Larice had last seen them on Mars, before everything had gone horribly wrong. And now he didn’t have running for his life as an excuse to avoid that conversation. “I was wondering where you were. I’d like to talk.”

“I was just looking around,” Alinivar said weakly. “Exploring.” As he watched, Larice crossed the room, sitting gingerly on the weird, human version of a hyberpod, in case it couldn’t support his weight. (He wasn’t sure what all the cloth was for, but least he wouldn’t stain it if he laid down on it. Small upsides to his new body, he tried to tell himself.) “But we can talk.” Not that he wanted to, not if this conversation was going where he thought it might, but he didn’t want to shut Larice out. They were supposed to be friends.

“Commander Niiue said that I’ve been offline for over a week. He caught me up somewhat, but we were in a rush to reach the three of you. He certainly didn’t mention this.”

He didn’t have to say what ‘this’ was. Without normal eyes or a face to make any sort of expression, Alinivar could only guess that Larice was scanning his form, fully taking it in.

“Why would you do this, Alinivar?” he asked, his voice buzzing.

It was too much to take. He was exhausted and terrified of what the morning might bring, and now even Larice was acting like this was just stupid little Alinivar making yet another problem for them. “How could you think this was my choice? Why would I want to be like this?” His voice was climbing to a scream, and he didn’t care enough to rein it in. Let Zarbol and Colonel Saturn overhear, who cared?

“I’m so slow and dried out now, and it _aches_ constantly, and I can’t cry properly about it! And everyone looks at me like it’s contagious! I was already a freak, why would I make it a thousand times worse? Why would you think I did this to myself?” The words poured out, impossible to hold back any longer: things he had wanted to tell to the others but convinced himself that they wouldn’t want to listen. “I didn’t _want_ this Larice, don’t ever say that!”

“Out of everyone, I think I understand that the best,” Larice said quietly, and that brought everything to a halt. An icy shot of guilt hit him, and he wobbled in place, unsure of whether to reach out to Larice or not. How could he have said that when he had only just learned that the same thing had happened to Larice, such a long time ago? To act like Larice couldn’t possibly understand... He really was a horrible friend.

He had shuffled a few steps towards the door, intent on finding some tiny uncomfortable place to hide in so no one had to put up with him, before Larice stood, hurrying to his side. “I’m not angry at you.” And he actually touched Alinivar on the shoulder as he said it. It seemed like people were so unnerved by him now that a single touch was absurdly novel.

“H-how can you not be? Someone forced you into this, I just stumbled into it like an idiot. I’ve been like this for a week, and it’s been decades for you. To act like I’m suffering in comparison to what you’ve been through...”

“No.” Putting an arm more firmly around his shoulder, he led Alinivar back to the sleeping area. From how much he was shaking, getting a chance to sit was appreciated. “I want to scream and cry about what happened to me as well. It’s a reasonable reaction.” He sat close to him, and Alinivar wondered if things could go back to what they were before: contact getting more bold each time, shoulders brushing to hugs that got longer and longer to something that almost resembled a cuddle. Back when Alinivar was a real mook and Larice hadn’t had all these spikes.

“It was just a mistake,” Alinivar whispered. “I’d take it all back if I could.”

As he spoke, Larice’s hand fell on one of his tentacles, at first running back and forth along the bottom, which was all innocent stuff. The bottoms of mook tentacles weren’t a big deal—people walked on them, so they couldn’t be that sensitive. But then his hand was reaching higher, to where a mook’s private parts hid, shielded by their outer tentacles. “I know. You didn’t deserve this. No one does.”

And now that hand was starting to trace light circles, drifting upward with each one. It was faint enough that he could barely feel it, but just looking made him shiver. “I—um—” He had to stop Larice, had to gather his voice and tell him he wasn’t giving an innocent massage—

“Do you not want this, Alinivar? You look distressed.”

“Wh-what?”

“If I was misreading your signals, and you don’t want to be intimate—”

This had taken an unexpected turn. “No! I mean! I do, but..” His voice crackled in a new and mortifying way, and he covered his face with his tendrils. “How do you even know about that?”

He shrugged, hand awkwardly hovering over Alinivar’s body, not moving any further until he had his answer. “The mooks on the Mothership gossiped. I think some of them wanted to scandalize us Starmen however they could, so I learned a lot about mook intimacy. I haven’t experienced it myself, but I have some idea of how to proceed. Is this okay with you?”

“Yeah, but... Why me? Why now?” Larice didn’t have much choice for partners, especially now in this burnt wasteland, but that didn’t mean he would want whiny, awkward, _mutilated_ Alinivar. Everything about him that could have been taken as attractively squishy and cute, if you squinted at it, had been stripped away.

“Because you’re my friend, and I want to comfort you. Because I’m remembering what it’s like, living in the wrong body. If I can give you one positive memory in it, won’t it be easier to bear? That’s enough of a reason in my mind.”

It wasn’t anything like a confession out of a romance novel, but that wouldn’t have been like Larice at all. That made it real, and it was enough for him reach a trembling tendril out to his hand. “Please, keep going?”

If he was bothered by Alinivar’s new weight, he didn’t show it as he helped him clamber into his lap, tentacles splayed everywhere. It wasn’t so unfamiliar—they had hugged in similar positions before—until Larice looped an arm around his back. It was such a simple gesture, but the implications of it had him ducking his head against Larice’s chest, embarrassed and thrilled and nervous all at once. Had he done it automatically, or had Larice known that Alinivar would need to lean back to let him access his innermost tentacles, and that simple gesture would keep him from falling?

Permission granted, he began to touch again.

It wasn’t that he was numb in these new tentacles. If you were giving someone new limbs, the ability to feel pressure was a must, or it’d be near impossible to move around or pick things up. And he still felt pain whenever he got hit in a fight, though it seemed muted. It wasn’t like he was cut off from the world. He still wasn’t sure what that machine had been for, but its creator obviously wanted functional subjects out of it.

But...something was missing. He could feel Larice’s cool hand exploring each of his appendages, running up higher but not yet reaching where his privates should have been. It was really nice, but shouldn’t there be more? He had never done this before with anyone, but he thought there was supposed to be a spark that just wasn’t there. Larice was doing a good job, it was just his body that was wrong. He couldn’t give off the slime that mooks used for...for _mating_ , not when all of those parts had been torn out. If Larice worked his way up to where Alinivar’s most intimate places were supposed to be, he’d find nothing but featureless, dry metal.

(Did Larice only want him now that he was mechanized? Would this have ever happened if he had been just a regular mook?)

“Am I doing something wrong?” Larice was already drawing away, his hand coming up to brush against one eyestalk and the tears gathering there again. Maybe it would have been better to replace all of his eyes, so he’d stop being such a crybaby.

“No, no! You’re fine, it’s just me. Now that I’m...like this, it’s just not going the way it usually does, for mooks. It’s supposed to be a lot more slimy, at least, and—and—I’m not not feeling very much of what you’re doing. Sorry.” He had never imagined his first time would be like this, and his body was ruining the whole thing.

Larice’s visor flickered as he considered this. “If your body is anything like Starmen, it may take more pressure to register. No one specifically designed our bodies to be intimate; we’re built, not created through reproduction, so it wasn’t a necessary function. But some of the bolder ones found a way around that, and I can try some of that with you. I promise I won’t hurt you in the process.” And suddenly his faint strokes became much firmer, Alinivar clinging to him in surprise. His touch soon centered on the seams in the metal that made up his tentacles, which proved to be far more sensitive than his smooth surfaces.

“I suppose it’s more sensitive on these areas so we’d be aware of damage to it. Otherwise, we might ignore injuries that would have us come apart. It’s convenient for other things, anyway.” How could he sound so calm when he was starting to drive Alinivar insane with sensation? It wasn’t anything like his own awkward fumbling when he was younger, pleasurable in a way he didn’t have words for.

“L-Larice, do you want me to... to...” It was amazing that he could get the words out with how distorted his voice had become, shaking and glitching, but he had to speak up. Shouldn’t he reciprocate in some way? What could he do, other than mimicking what Larice was doing to him? “To do something for you?”

“I’m doing this to make you feel better. This isn’t about me.” He punctuated it with a stroke up one of the innermost seams, and Alinivar let out a moan that was mostly static. He was going to fall apart at this point. Was it possible to finish like this?

“But I don’t want to be a—to be selfish.” The words ‘a bad lover’ nearly escaped, but he managed to catch himself in time. Just those few words could have scared Larice away and destroyed this fragile thing growing between them. He didn’t want to lose their friendship.

“It’s not selfish to share yourself with me, is it? Maybe another time I can show you how Starmen work, but this is enough for now.”

He couldn’t contain his voice, muffling his face against Larice’s shoulder, but it was becoming hard to care. Zarbol might tease him for it later, but wouldn’t that mean his teammate was comfortable with him again? It would be such a little thing, but it’d make him feel like he was part of this group again. (Explaining to Colonel Saturn, on the other hand... He could confront that horror in the morning.)

As Larice continued to ravish him, drawing out whimpers and trembling, he could hear fans switching on inside of him, whirring away to contain the growing heat. There was a feeling rising in him, different than the quiet, lonely orgasms he had given himself, back when his life didn’t have prophecies or psychic abilities or friends. It was plateauing, though, and he _needed_ to finish before he exploded or something inside of him melted.

There was one thing he could do, even in this body. With Larice holding him securely, he felt steady enough to let go of him, lifting his own limbs. It wasn’t the best substitute for slime, but he quickly licked at his tentacle before bringing it up to his eyestalk, one of his few remaining flesh parts. It was still dryer than he was used to, but he carefully circled it, pumping up and down as Larice continued to explore him.

It only took a few strokes, and he hurried to let go before he could squeeze down reflexively. Larice held onto him as his body spasmed, tentacles twitching and fluttering independently of each other, out of Alinivar’s conscious control. The vision in his middle eye flickered and distorted with each wave of pleasure cresting over him: black bars overlaying Larice’s torso and his colors inverting and reverting suddenly, before a veil of static ate up everything.

If he hadn’t been in Larice’s arms, he would have been terrified, but his friend wouldn’t have led him into something that could break him. He was safe, and for the first time in a week, nothing hurt, but it was still unnerving enough to cling to Larice as his orgasm subsided.

His vision slowly returned back to normal as he panted for breath in Larice’s arms. “Is it always like that? With the glitching?”

From adventuring with him for this long, he could easily recognize that that whirring as Larice’s form of a laugh, as he drew him against his chest. “That’s usually an inevitable part of it. You’ll get used to it.” ‘Get used to it?’ Did that mean they could do this again? How could such a deadpan voice sound this flirtatious?! Alinivar was too far gone.

He was a bit too tall for human sleeping furniture, his feet protruding off the edge, but he laid them both down anyway, Alinivar draped over his chest. “Are you feeling any better? In the morning, we’ll head onward, and we need you at your best.”

A single intimate encounter wasn’t enough to erase the horror and confusion of a new body, and it didn’t change the fact that, when morning came, they’d be fighting for their lives again. He laid his head against Larice’s chest, across the ever-present scar, listening to all the tiny sounds of the mechanisms inside him. The aches would come back soon, but for now, he was as relaxed and painless as he could be.

“In the morning, I’ll be ready.”

**Author's Note:**

> Mechanizing Alinivar is actually really brutal, when you think about it. Aside from the violence and body horror of it (which I kind of want to explore, but I'm squeamish), that’s a terrible thing to happen to a character that 1) starts off already very socially isolated and 2) is super hesitant about this whole quest thing, poor guy. Also, maybe this is too lewd, but apparently both squid and octopi have a specific arm that’s for sperm? I'm undecided on whether that should carry over to mook reproduction, but that sure is a thing to imagine in battle, with all the tentacle slapping Alin does.
> 
> This was a little difficult to write, wondering if I’m the weirdo in the fandom now and people might read this to boggle at it, but I’m still having fun, which is the important part.


End file.
